Soylent Green is people!....
The prophetic line has grown today even more shades in the light of the synthetic hamburger meat.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Soylent Green
Soylent Green is people!....
The prophetic line has grown today even more shades in the light of the synthetic hamburger meat.
Good testers
Good testers are rare and they worth their weight in gold... Unfortunately true...
I have seldom seen good testers. Probably because most of them were hired as last resort. With a few exceptions all testers I have interacted were sub-mediocre students or self sufficient professionals that did not knew much about their jobs. I have seen testers that were testing quite delicate subsystems without understanding them, or making affirmations on operating systems without understanding the difference between processes and threads.
A big surprise for me came in another organization that had separate development and testing departments, the latter being seen as a service for the former. C'mon - we are pushing the same boulder upwards... Their job was mainly to delay or even stop releasing products by applying the most complicated methodology possible and spicing it up with almost nonsense (keyword based testing, test vision, test concept, and several other esoteric concepts).
The goal of testers is to discover bugs - either manually or automatically (praise the SDETs) but not hindering the work of the developers as without developer's work they would be useless. They are for sure an equal part in the team and their work is the key factor for quality - but testers that are only descoping are a pain in the ass.
I have seldom seen good testers. Probably because most of them were hired as last resort. With a few exceptions all testers I have interacted were sub-mediocre students or self sufficient professionals that did not knew much about their jobs. I have seen testers that were testing quite delicate subsystems without understanding them, or making affirmations on operating systems without understanding the difference between processes and threads.
A big surprise for me came in another organization that had separate development and testing departments, the latter being seen as a service for the former. C'mon - we are pushing the same boulder upwards... Their job was mainly to delay or even stop releasing products by applying the most complicated methodology possible and spicing it up with almost nonsense (keyword based testing, test vision, test concept, and several other esoteric concepts).
The goal of testers is to discover bugs - either manually or automatically (praise the SDETs) but not hindering the work of the developers as without developer's work they would be useless. They are for sure an equal part in the team and their work is the key factor for quality - but testers that are only descoping are a pain in the ass.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Fit for the job
I have recently been contacted by lots of recruiters that are insistently proposing me jobs although I am not actively looking for a new one. Actively means applying for one and being true interested in it.
I, myself, am a passive job seeker - I agree being contacted by recruiters for jobs where I do fit in.
But most of the time I am contacted for something else. E.G:
1. Contacted for embedded C and automotive... in my profile I have never mentioned those skills and I never applied for a similar position. I like embedded - but as a hobby not as a full time job as I lack true experience. My resume clearly states that most of my knowledge is in Java/Python. It is a long time since I have last touched C.
2. Management positions. I have been a manager. A small one - team leader. This was one of the worst experiences I had in my entire life. I had tremendous responsibility on people (I had to reduce attrition in a company paying below market average) and project (tight deadline and lots of technical challenges) with little managerial means (limited access to incentives and investment budgets). It was hard to find resources to keep people motivated and beg for money in order to secure project materials from a posse of beaurocrats (cost controllers) that were handling the project money that were already allocated. Every day I had to answer questions as "Why did X leave? Why didn't you do something to keep him - He left because he was underpaid and You did not approve a 100EUR raise for him... (20% ot his salary at the moment)", "Do you really need two servers? Isn't it a waste? Can't you share one with another team? - NO. We have to create a cluster and we DO need this specific server as it is our standard building block...". Long story short - I am not interested into dealing with dishonesty and avarice once again.
3. Frontend development jobs - I like frontend development but I am not an expert. I have much coded on the server side back-ends and my front-end aesthetics and usability qualities are something I have to improve a lot. I never mentioned also those in my profiles.l
4. Junior positions for senior people - the funny part comes when discussing money - a long silence on their side...
The point I want to reach in this rant is that recruiters do not really read CVs. Or they read them between lines and if some of the acronyms they see there they jump at you with an offer without pondering it better. All of the above points show me clearly that at least Romanian headhunters are not fit for their jobs. They do not understand the field of IT recruitment ad work only on pattern matching. They are mostly Political Science, Psychology, Business or esoteric ones (some at some diploma factories), graduates without no HR formal training, or at least with a shallow one. They are unable to select candidates and/ or ask the help of the technical people that can read a technical CV. They are rude and insistent (one recruiter called me directly to provide a recommendation - although she was told to use e-mail to contact me. Of course she called me during a meeting via company's PBX lines).
I am considering removing my profiles from job sites and use only personal direct networking for applying at jobs.
However there are common-sense recruiters that are able to do their job correctly - but they are as rare as a white elephant.
UPDATE: I will for sure clean my LinkedIn recruitment connections if I learn nothing new from them by the end of the year.
I, myself, am a passive job seeker - I agree being contacted by recruiters for jobs where I do fit in.
But most of the time I am contacted for something else. E.G:
1. Contacted for embedded C and automotive... in my profile I have never mentioned those skills and I never applied for a similar position. I like embedded - but as a hobby not as a full time job as I lack true experience. My resume clearly states that most of my knowledge is in Java/Python. It is a long time since I have last touched C.
2. Management positions. I have been a manager. A small one - team leader. This was one of the worst experiences I had in my entire life. I had tremendous responsibility on people (I had to reduce attrition in a company paying below market average) and project (tight deadline and lots of technical challenges) with little managerial means (limited access to incentives and investment budgets). It was hard to find resources to keep people motivated and beg for money in order to secure project materials from a posse of beaurocrats (cost controllers) that were handling the project money that were already allocated. Every day I had to answer questions as "Why did X leave? Why didn't you do something to keep him - He left because he was underpaid and You did not approve a 100EUR raise for him... (20% ot his salary at the moment)", "Do you really need two servers? Isn't it a waste? Can't you share one with another team? - NO. We have to create a cluster and we DO need this specific server as it is our standard building block...". Long story short - I am not interested into dealing with dishonesty and avarice once again.
3. Frontend development jobs - I like frontend development but I am not an expert. I have much coded on the server side back-ends and my front-end aesthetics and usability qualities are something I have to improve a lot. I never mentioned also those in my profiles.l
4. Junior positions for senior people - the funny part comes when discussing money - a long silence on their side...
The point I want to reach in this rant is that recruiters do not really read CVs. Or they read them between lines and if some of the acronyms they see there they jump at you with an offer without pondering it better. All of the above points show me clearly that at least Romanian headhunters are not fit for their jobs. They do not understand the field of IT recruitment ad work only on pattern matching. They are mostly Political Science, Psychology, Business or esoteric ones (some at some diploma factories), graduates without no HR formal training, or at least with a shallow one. They are unable to select candidates and/ or ask the help of the technical people that can read a technical CV. They are rude and insistent (one recruiter called me directly to provide a recommendation - although she was told to use e-mail to contact me. Of course she called me during a meeting via company's PBX lines).
I am considering removing my profiles from job sites and use only personal direct networking for applying at jobs.
However there are common-sense recruiters that are able to do their job correctly - but they are as rare as a white elephant.
UPDATE: I will for sure clean my LinkedIn recruitment connections if I learn nothing new from them by the end of the year.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Unconventional display technologies
In the latter years the digital display devices as 7-segment, LED/LCD dot matrix and graphical displays have acquired the majority of the market.
However there are still some not so common technologies that are still worth mentioning as they are spectacular.
1. Nixie tubes - their characteristic warm glow makes them the one of the most appealing vintage display technologies. They look best in mid-low lighting ciondition.
2. VFD displays - a little bit younger than Nixie. VFD can display both digits/letters as well as graphical information. It is more robust than Nixie and can be seen in any lighting condition due to its high brightness
3. Solari boards - or flip display - electromechanical displays that had their glory in the '70s. Awesome readability and distinctive update noise.
However there are still some not so common technologies that are still worth mentioning as they are spectacular.
1. Nixie tubes - their characteristic warm glow makes them the one of the most appealing vintage display technologies. They look best in mid-low lighting ciondition.
2. VFD displays - a little bit younger than Nixie. VFD can display both digits/letters as well as graphical information. It is more robust than Nixie and can be seen in any lighting condition due to its high brightness
3. Solari boards - or flip display - electromechanical displays that had their glory in the '70s. Awesome readability and distinctive update noise.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
No more Humanitas bookshop in Timisoara
The Humanitas bookshop, one of the oldest and most respectable places has recently closed.
It is a great loss for the city as it was for a long time the only place where I could buy the books I wanted wether they were fiction or technical.
I am feeling that Timisoara is loosing every year more and more from its cultural heritage.
It is a great loss for the city as it was for a long time the only place where I could buy the books I wanted wether they were fiction or technical.
I am feeling that Timisoara is loosing every year more and more from its cultural heritage.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Looper
From time to time a good sci-fi movie breaks the patterns of the commercial "box-office" stupidities. Looper is one of these movies - interesting, dramatic and and extremely dystopic.
The movie is in the same line (and shares an actor - Bruce Willis) with another dark masterpiece - Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys.
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